Had her captain back in Boston known there were witches in the area when he’d arranged with the captain in San Francisco for her to transfer?
Most people would go a lifetime without ever running into a witch. Why was it she had such terrible luck? Couldn’t Winona Lightfoot have been murdered four months earlier, before Samantha got there? Why now?
Why is this happening to me? Haven’t I been through enough?
And the full horror of everything came crashing down around her. She fell on her bed, grabbed a pillow, buried her face in it, and began to scream at the top of her lungs. The pain and fear and anger she was experiencing couldn’t be expressed through mere tears. As her conscious thoughts were stripped away, all that remained was the unthinking animal self that could still feel great fear and great pain. That was the side that she was connected to as she screamed and beat her fists into her mattress.
And finally the exhaustion won over and she had nothing left in her. She lay still for a moment, panting, drained, in a clouded haze of despair.
And then in her mind she saw the hallway of doors. It was the place she’d gone before to remember, to find answers about her past that was shrouded in darkness and mystery. She still didn’t know why she only remembered bits and pieces of her childhood. She’d had confrontations before with her younger selves at ages five, six, and seven. After those encounters, the memories from those years of her life had come back, a steady stream of information that enlightened and explained but brought no comfort.
Expect for Freaky. She owed it to her five-year-old self for reminding her about the kitten she had created for herself as a playmate and for teaching her how to conjure him again. She brought her hands together, letting the energy vibrate between them until the familiar ball of black fluff took shape. The kitten mewed at her, sounding somewhat cross.
“I’m sorry. It’s been a hard day,” she whispered to the kitten, who immediately began batting at her fingers.
She rolled over, scooping him up into her arms, focusing on the feeling of his fur against her skin. She closed her eyes and saw again that corridor. The door marked TWELVE, the one the others had warned her she mustn’t open, called to her. Light was spilling from under the door into the hallway, causing shadows to shift and slide over one another.
She took deep, calming breaths and forced herself to focus on the memories of her past. She could see herself standing in the corridor. And the three younger versions of herself that she’d already met were staring at her curiously.
“What is it?” she asked.
“You’ve been gone,” Five said.
“We were worried,” Six added.
“But glad too,” Seven said.
“It’s dangerous here,” the three of them chorused.
“But I need to understand,” she said. “And I don’t think I can do that without remembering.”
“You don’t want to remember,” Five said, urgency in her voice.
“I might not want to, but I think I have to. That’s the only way to deal with it.”
“You’re not ready,” Seven said.
“Maybe not for Twelve, but I think I can handle her,” she said, pointing to the closed door with EIGHT marked on it.
“She’s not like us,” Six said.
“Why not?”
“She wants to hurt you,” Seven said, dropping her voice to a whisper.
Samantha felt the hair rise on the back of her neck.
“Why would she want to hurt me?”
“She doesn’t think you’ve suffered enough,” Five said.
Samantha didn’t know how to respond. Finally, she found her voice and asked, “Why would she want anyone to suffer? And why would she think that I haven’t suffered enough? And why would she want to hurt another version of herself? It makes no sense.”
“She’s very angry,” Seven said.
“It makes her a little crazy,” Six said.
“And she doesn’t care who she hurts, not even herself. That makes her dangerous,” Five added.
“Why?” Samantha asked.
One by one, each of her three younger versions shrugged.
“Then I guess it’s up to me to find out, because I’m pretty angry too,” Samantha said. She stepped forward and twisted the knob on the door. It opened, and she gave it a good shove.
Out stepped an eight-year-old version of herself. Unlike the others, this girl wore her long red hair in a single braid down the middle of her back. She was dressed all in black and her eyes were glowing red.
Samantha took a step back, stunned by her appearance. The amount of power the child radiated was so much more than the other versions of her did.
“What do you want?” the child demanded.
“I want to know why you’re so angry,” Samantha whispered.
The child sneered. “Stupid woman. Don’t you know the truth can kill you?” The child’s hands began to glow red as well, and the more they glowed, the more translucent her skin became, until Samantha could see right through it to the veins beneath. The blood that flowed through them was tinged blue, and she could swear she saw sparks of electricity chasing one another like bolts of lightning running through the girl.
Samantha stepped back and raised her hands defensively.
“I’ve always heard that the truth can set you free,” Samantha said, eyeing the child cautiously.
“Freedom is an illusion! Pain is all that’s real.”
“I don’t believe that,” Samantha said.
“Oh no?” The child raised an eyebrow and then lifted her arms. Fire streamed out of her hands, igniting the walls around them. Pain knifed through Samantha’s head, searing so intently she screamed and fell to the floor.
The three younger girls raced forward, their hair and clothes on fire, and worked to contain the blaze. They were screaming and crying as loud as she was. She could feel their pain as if it was her own.
Because it is my own. Because they are me and all of this is in my mind. And her eight-year-old self was trying to destroy that very mind.
“You’re insane!” she screamed at her.
“You would think so,” the girl shouted, making her voice audible over the crackle of the flames.
Samantha could feel parts of her brain dying, nerve clusters shorting out. “You’re killing yourself too! How can you do this?”
It went against every law of nature. Her kind had, above all else, an instinct for self-preservation. Because their magic was so directly tied into themselves and the energy they were capable of harnessing and focusing, there were limits as to how much they could do, how much magic they could wield before it became too much and their bodies couldn’t, wouldn’t give any more.
“You know the thing about magic,” child eight said. “It’s amazing how much more you can accomplish if you don’t care if you live or die.”
“What made you like this? Why?” Samantha asked, panting for breath.
Eight lifted her hands and the fire stopped. The other three little girls retreated, trembling, behind Samantha, their faces covered in soot.
“Because this year I learned the truth.”
“And what is the truth?” Samantha asked.
The little girl reached down and grabbed Samantha’s hands tight. Pain seared through Samantha as though the child were pouring liquid fire on her. The blazing red eyes seemed to burn brighter. “The only truth there is.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then you’re a fool and you’re going to suffer.”
“But why?” Samantha whimpered, feeling like a child herself, cowering before an angry adult.
“Because you refuse to learn, you refuse to accept, you refuse to believe.”
“Believe what?” Samantha screamed.
“Life. Isn’t. Fair.”
When she was eight, everything had been so confusing. It was the year she had been taken out of school because she had blinded a bully who had knocked her down. She could feel her mother’s pride in her, but all her mother expressed was her outrage that she had used her powers publicly. She had remembered that, but not what happened after they got home.
For three hours, her mother had put her under a spell that had made Samantha feel like she was clawing out her own eyes. The pain, the blood, the sudden blindness, and the terror had replayed over and over again until her mother was sure that she’d learned her lesson.
And at the end of it, Samantha had learned more than just that she shouldn’t use her powers publicly. She had learned that she wanted to hurt people, make them feel pain too.
And that year had only gotten worse. Her mother had flown into a rage when she realized that Samantha loved the Christmas tree, which they put up every year so they fit in with everyone else. Samantha had always wished that she could get toys like some of the other kids she had known at school. But that year she didn’t even get magic gifts. She had instead seen the tree destroyed before her eyes, along with all of the ornaments, some of which she had made herself. There was never again to be a pretty tree with sparkly lights that made her feel warm inside.
The final blow was when her mother had caught her with Freaky. She’d been forced to banish the kitten, and her mother had made sure that she would never conjure her pet again by blocking the memory of how to do so from her mind. The young witch had been truly, and terribly, alone. And it was that night that she realized life’s greatest secret, the one that many knew but few understood.
Life isn’t fair.
And as she embraced that knowledge, Samantha cried harder for the loss of a second innocence. The hallway faded from her mind. She found herself in her room at home, and she sobbed until she finally fell asleep, because life truly wasn’t fair.
* * *
She was standing downtown. She looked up at the buildings around her, and the sun was glinting off the windows. There were a few trees nearby but no birds chirping in them. The air was still, heavy. It felt . . . wrong . . . in some way.
She turned and looked at the man standing next to her. George Wakefield, seismologist, earthquake expert.
He turned and looked at her. He was balding, thin hair clinging to the sides of his head. His eyes looked large, enormous behind his glasses. He was mouthing words, but there was no sound accompanying them. She couldn’t tell what he was saying to her.
“What?” she asked.
He gave her a strange smile, a smile mixed with sorrow and triumph.
“It’s the Big One.”
And then the earth was moving beneath her feet. She could hear explosions all around her and realized that water pipes, gas mains, everything was tearing itself apart. Glass shattered above in ten thousand windows and began to rain down on the people below. She reached out to George, to shield him, protect him from what was coming.
But he just took a step back. “You can’t save me from this,” he said. “At least I know I was right.”
And then the earth opened at their feet; a fissure divided them. As the ground continued to shake, it knocked her off her feet. She looked up, on her hands and knees, as utility poles and traffic lights crashed to the ground everywhere. A fire hydrant exploded, and water was gushing. It surrounded George and poured into the fissure in the earth that separated them.
“Run!” she screamed, even as she brought up her hands. She could lift him, throw him, do something, because she had to. Because she knew what was coming next.
And it happened too fast.
A power line fell, and the cable dropped into the pool of water at George’s feet, electrocuting him instantly. It was followed a moment later by a car that was hit by a semi. It flipped end over end and crashed into his charred remains, scattering them to ash.
George Wakefield had predicted the Big One and it had killed him.
Around her people were dying by the thousands. She could feel it, and she screamed at the senselessness, the brutality.
And through the blaring of sirens, the twisting of metal, she could hear laughter. Somewhere, a woman was laughing. She laughed as thousands perished by the moment. She laughed until that was the only sound Samantha could hear. She laughed and laughed. And then she stopped laughing for just a moment and said, “I have what I wanted.”
Samantha turned just in time to see a building crashing down on her. She threw out her arms, but her words and her magic failed her. She grabbed for her cross necklace, but it wasn’t there. And she knew the building was going to kill her no matter what she did to try to stop it. She fell. The ground was hard beneath her and the first pieces of rubble struck.
* * *
Samantha woke with a scream. She was on the floor of her room, tangled in her sheets, and her nightstand had fallen on top of her. It took a moment for her mind to realize that she was alive, safe, and in her bedroom.
“Just a nightmare,” she panted.
And at least the sleeping medication Jill had taken and the earplugs must have worked, because her roommate didn’t come to check on her.
I should make sure she’s okay, Samantha realized as she pushed the end table off of herself and sat up. I should have talked to her already, but I was just too tired, too strung out.
She was shaking and sweating. Just a nightmare, she repeated. And the memories of it came flooding back over her. They had all the intensity that her memories of the past had when they came to the surface, escaping from the locked corners of her mind. This had been no ordinary dream, she realized in a flash. Just as it had been no nightmare of her past.
It had been a vision of the future.
7
Samantha shuddered. She’d had some visions as a child. She didn’t remember what they were, but she could remember that they had happened. This was the first actual vision of the future she’d had in years, though. She sat down on her bed and wrapped her arms around herself as she thought about what it meant.
George Wakefield hadn’t looked any older in the vision than he had in the newscast. That would seem to place the vision in the near future rather than the far future. And it was the Big One, the quake that Californians talked about that was coming someday. She’d heard stories about famous quakes in the past and was shocked that none of those were seen as the mythical Big One.
She remembered the feeling during the earthquake, the violence, the loss of control. There was nothing she knew of that could stop it from happening. So, what was the point of the vision? Was she supposed to make sure that both she and George were well out of the city when it hit?
It didn’t give her a decent time frame to work with, though. Unless the two of them were going to abandon the city altogether, and possibly even the entire state, there wasn’t much that was helpful about it.
She tried to replay the images in her mind. She knew that somehow George had predicted it. Did that mean that his ideas about animals sensing an earthquake coming and leaving the area ahead of time were true?
She leaned down, picked up her clock, and put it back on her end table. It was four in the morning. She hated these middle of the night wake-ups.
She should go check on Jill, make sure she was okay, before trying to go back to sleep. If I even can get back to sleep. At the moment, that was a huge question mark.
The day loomed large ahead of her with far too much to do. She exited her room and crossed the hall. She eased Jill’s door open just far enough so that she could see her. The other woman was on her bed, sound asleep. Samantha listened to her breathing for a few moments before easing the door closed again.
She hesitated in the hall, trying to decide whether to attempt more sleep or to just stay up. She fin
ally headed for the kitchen. Better to get a head start on the chaos than waste time struggling to get to sleep.
She grabbed a bagel, slathered it with strawberry cream cheese, and ate it. A glass of orange juice washed it all down.
Her insurance company’s twenty-four-hour claim service was a pain to deal with, but when she finally hung up she knew she could check that off her list. Fortunately, they were going to reimburse her for getting a rental car while they had her car checked out.
She called for a taxi and took it to a car rental agency near the airport that was open early. She had to practically put a spell on the guy behind the counter in order to convince him that she did not want an upgraded car. She did, however, pay for the GPS service, since she was pretty sure her own GPS was toast.
Installed in her new rental car, which was small and black, Samantha drove to the police station. She had managed to retrieve the letter threatening Winona from the backseat of her car the night before. The envelope was singed, but she hoped that forensics could get something off of the letter anyway. The technician who took it from her gave her a dubious look when she explained what had happened to it.
Then she drove back home. When she got inside the apartment, she was surprised to see that Jill was up. Her roommate looked bleary-eyed.
“Are you okay?” Samantha asked.
“The great thing about sleeping pills is that they make you sleepy. The bad thing is, they make you sleepy.”
“Hasn’t worn off yet?”
Jill shook her head.
“Why are you up this early?”
“I’ve got another meeting with one of the professors on campus, and I need to prep for it. Why are you up?”
“Couldn’t sleep,” Samantha said.
“Tonight you should take some of what I had.”
“No, thank you. My dreams are already weird enough without adding medication to the mix.”
Jill grimaced. “Amen to that.”
Samantha cleared her throat, trying to decide how to bring up the elephant in the room. There was no nice, easy way to go about doing it, though.
“We should talk about everything that happened yesterday,” Samantha said.
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